The Internet has enabled copyright owners to make available their works to consumers around the world, but has also enabled others to do so without any compensation for copyright owners. Efforts to digitize our history so that all have access to it face questions about copyright ownership by those who are hard, if not impossible, to locate. There are concerns about statutory license and damage mechanisms.

Federal judges are forced to make decisions using laws that are difficult to apply today. Even the Copyright Office itself faces challenges in meeting the growing needs of its customers - the American public. ... The goal of these hearings will be to determine whether the laws are still working in the digital age.

This may be a case of being careful what you wish for. Big media has paid a tremendous amount of campaign donations to members of Congress. For example, between 2005 and 2011 large media interests paid members of the U.S. Senate $86M USD -- roughly a tenth of all their campaign costs.

Thus any copyright reform may come in the direction of furthering big media's dream goals, such as instituting stiff penalties for customers who use software to crack digital rights management and burn backup copies. This is certainly one debate to watch closely in coming months.

As for Rep. Goodlatte, it's hard to tell where his interests lies. He's received large donations from Google Inc. (GOOG) and Pandora Media Inc. (P) on one side of the fence, and from Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) on the other side of the fence [source]. Thus he may be about as close to an unbiased party as you get in Congress these days, given that the special interest payouts (may) have balanced each other out.

You start by disallowing corporations and special interest groups from making bribes...er I mean donations. You put a cap on what an individual is allowed to donate. Can't afford TV commercials? Oh well, they bend the truth and slander like its a Springer episode anyway. I'd be happy to see them go. Limited TV exposure has the opposite effect in that news stations are going to search out things to report because people who do not know what the internet is are going to rely on news coverage. Make the news stations go out and report instead of getting news fed to them, make them do their jobs. If they don't do their jobs, no one watches them. There are just as many reports about what Lindsey Lohan is doing this weekend as there was Obama election coverage. If the news can go out and invade some one's personal life that only freaks care about, they are more than capable of investing a politician. The news will report anything that gets them viewers. People being forced to watch news for information = ad revenue.

The rest of us tech savvy people can read blogs and visit websites that are a dime a dozen to start up.

What First Amendment rights are being taken up the ass by preventing corporations, shady special interest groups and completely anonymous SuperPACs from donating money to politicians (noting that indirect support should have a monetary value like any benefit-in-kind and/or bribe)?

Free speech, right? Corporations being perfectly normal natural persons entirely predicted by the Founded Fathers using their unrivaled access to the TARDIS.

Corporations are not people. They are not citizens. They have no voting rights. They should not be able to wield their cash like a club to override the will of the people. That's a perversion.

If we created a litmus test, it would be very simple. What would you do if it were discovered that big media were providing 20% of a politicians campaign funding? 50%? What about 90%? Does Free Speech for Corporations still hold up then?

Not in a free nation it won't... We'd take back the government in an armed uprising and give corporations a boot out of politics.